The New York Times  
July 10, 1998

Colombian President-Elect Meets with Guerrilla Leaders


By DIANA JEAN SCHEMO

BOGOTA, Colombia -- President-elect Andres Pastrana met the top leaders
of Colombia's largest guerrilla force in an unannounced session
Thursday and came away pledging to remove security forces from five
municipalities and to start peace talks with rebel leaders within 90 days of 
taking office. 

In a brief press statement Thursday afternoon, Pastrana said that he had met 
the leaders of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, to 
deliver on his top campaign promise, a pledge to negotiate an end to nearly 
four decades of political violence in Colombia. 

A brief videotape showed Pastrana shaking hands with leaders of the group,
Manuel Marulanda and Jorge Briceno, at a location he described only as
"somewhere in Colombia." 

Pastrana became the first president to talk directly with the insurgent leaders. 

Flying in a small plane under the auspices of the International Committee of 
the Red Cross, Pastrana, wearing a yellow polo shirt, was flanked by the rebel
leaders in camouflage uniforms. 

He said they had raised some "worries" over a 10-point peace plan in his
campaign platform, and expressed "political willingness" to hold a dialogue 
on "the national problem of reaching peace with social justice." 

But he declined to answer questions on the discussions, saying the peace 
process would require "responsibility, seriousness and discretion" on the part 
of Colombians. 

Though Pastrana had pledged to meet the rebel leaders soon after winning 
the election June 21, Thursday's meeting came as a complete surprise, and 
was carried out under extremely tight security. 

In recent days Pastrana's transition team had told reporters the president-elect
would be leaving for a few weeks' vacation in France, where his wife and
children were waiting for him. Throughout the week, officials like Guillermo
Fernandez de Soto, who Pastrana plans to name foreign minister, avoided
returning phone calls, without explanation. 

Industrial, ranching and business leaders, who are among those hardest hit by
guerrilla extortion, greeted word of the meeting enthusiastically. "Pastrana is
fulfilling his election promises boldly," said Jorge Visbal, head of the 
Ranchers Federation. "It's an important step forward which must be 
vigorously andenthusiastically consolidated." 

One Colombian news magazine, Cambio 16, reported that the ranchers lost 
some 70 million to the rebels last year alone. 

Jose Fernando Castro, omsbudsman in the outgoing government, called the
meeting "a historic development without precedent," and said it "showed the 
will for peace of both the new government and the FARC." The rebel group is 
Latin America's oldest and most powerful, with intelligence estimates of its 
fighting capacity running from 10,000 to 15,000 combatants. 

The agreement of the rebel group would be crucial to negotiating any lasting
peace in this country of 36 million, which has lost more than 30,000 people to
political violence since the 1960s. 

Coincidentally, the second-largest rebel group, the National Liberation Army, 
has been preparing for talks in Germany next week with business and church 
leaders.

Not to be outdone, one government official, Environment Minister Eduardo
Verano, told Colombian radio that two officials of the current government 
will meet with National Liberation Army leaders after they had finished 
preparatory talks with civic leaders. Leaders of the Revolutionary Armed 
Forces of Colombia steadfastly refused to negotiate peace with the 
government of President Ernesto Samper, which it calls "illegitimate," and 
boosted Pastrana's standing days before the election by meeting with his 
campaign chief, Victor Ricardo. 

In a strange, post-election turnaround, a German couple who had spent the 
last two years in a Medellin jail for paying a ransom to National Liberation 
Army rebels now appear to be the shepherds of the peace effort. 

The couple, Werner and Isabel Mauss, had been accused by police of colluding
with the rebels. 

Mr. and Mrs. Mauss, however, said that they were on a mission to free a 
German executive's wife who had been kidnapped by the rebels, and that 
paying the ransom removed the largest obstacle to their country's hosting 
peace talks between the rebels and the Colombian government.